The Level Of Anxiety And The Contributing Factors Leading To It Among Nursing Freshmen

Objectives: The purpose of this study were: 1.to investigate the level of anxiety among freshman major in nursing; 2.to explore the contributing factors leading to the anxiety among nursing freshman. Method: 320 freshmen have been investigated with structured questionnaires. The cross section method was used. A correlational study with an objective and anonymous sample of 160 freshmen major in nursing (experimental group)and 160 major in clinical medicine(control group) was recruited. Hainan Medical Collage, Guangxi Medical University and Nursing School of Central South University are adopted as the setting for data collection. A questionnaire containing two demographic sheets and one scale, SAS(Self-Rating Anxiety Scale), is adopted for data collection. SAS was preciously translated into Chinese and demonstrated good reliability and validity. Chronbach's alpha was used to measure the internal consistency of SAS, obtained α= 0.95. Mean and SD were used to describe the level of anxiety, step-wise regression was used to describe the importance of the contributing factors leading to the anxiety. Relations between variables were expressed in Pearson correlation coefficients. A p value of less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results:1. Out of 320 eligible freshmen, 312 consented to participation giving the effective response rate of 97.5%. 2. The experimental group had a mean score of 45.3 (SD =8.84) with 42 (26.6%) subjects SAS scoring more than 50 and the control group had a mean score of 44.9 (SD =10.57) with 39 (25.3%) subjects SAS scoring more than 50..3. A statistically significant low positve correlation between the level of anxiety and the professional attitude in the experimental group(r=0.254,p<0.001), indicating the better they felt their profession, the lower the anxiety level. The anxiety level had statistically significant positive correlation with the job-hunting stress in the control group(r=0.315,p<0.001), indicating that subjects who had the lower job -hunting stress level had lower anxiety level. In the experimental group, the anxiety level had no statistically significant correlation with job-hunting stress level(P>0.05) . Conclusion: 1. Nursing freshmen had an anxiety level as same as clinical medicine ones;The anxiety level of nursing freshmen are significantly related with their professional attitude, the attitude towards nursing profession from the society and their parents, their family income, whether they got used to the study methods, and etc . The college entrance examination testing score, changing of living place and not adapting to the new environment influenced the nursing freshman's level of anxiety.